We investigate density perturbations sourced by a curvaton with a generic energy potential. The key feature of a curvaton potential which deviates from a quadratic is that the curvaton experiences a nonuniform onset of its oscillation. This sources additional contributions to the resulting density perturbations, and we especially find that the non-Gaussianity parameter f NL can become large with either sign no matter whether the curvaton dominates or subdominates the universe when it decays. Such nonquadratic curvaton potentials are required in order to produce a red-tilted density perturbation spectrum (without invoking large-field inflation), and are also motivated by explicit curvaton models based on microscopic physics. We further apply our generic results to the case where the curvaton is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a broken U(1) symmetry, and show that the resulting density perturbations are strongly enhanced towards the hilltop region of the energy potential, accompanied by a mild increase of the non-Gaussianity. Such hilltop Nambu-Goldstone curvatons can produce observationally suggested density perturbations under wide ranges of inflation/reheating scales, and further predict the non-Gaussianity of the density perturbations to lie within the range 10f NL30. © 2011 American Physical Society.
Non-Gaussianity from curvatons revisited / Kawasaki, M.; Kobayashi, T.; Takahashi, F.. - In: PHYSICAL REVIEW D, PARTICLES, FIELDS, GRAVITATION, AND COSMOLOGY. - ISSN 1550-7998. - 84:12(2011), pp. 1-19. [10.1103/PhysRevD.84.123506]
Non-Gaussianity from curvatons revisited
Kobayashi T.
;
2011-01-01
Abstract
We investigate density perturbations sourced by a curvaton with a generic energy potential. The key feature of a curvaton potential which deviates from a quadratic is that the curvaton experiences a nonuniform onset of its oscillation. This sources additional contributions to the resulting density perturbations, and we especially find that the non-Gaussianity parameter f NL can become large with either sign no matter whether the curvaton dominates or subdominates the universe when it decays. Such nonquadratic curvaton potentials are required in order to produce a red-tilted density perturbation spectrum (without invoking large-field inflation), and are also motivated by explicit curvaton models based on microscopic physics. We further apply our generic results to the case where the curvaton is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a broken U(1) symmetry, and show that the resulting density perturbations are strongly enhanced towards the hilltop region of the energy potential, accompanied by a mild increase of the non-Gaussianity. Such hilltop Nambu-Goldstone curvatons can produce observationally suggested density perturbations under wide ranges of inflation/reheating scales, and further predict the non-Gaussianity of the density perturbations to lie within the range 10f NL30. © 2011 American Physical Society.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.